Electronic documents typically include semantic information that would be helpful if the information was recognized as such. Recognition and use of this semantic information could result in increased interoperability between desktop software applications and other desktop applications and/or web-based applications. Recognition of this semantic information may also provide benefits in electronic commerce. Independent third parties need to be able to easily develop list of terms for recognition and actions to be provided for this semantic information. However, developers also need to be able to restrict the actions to only authorized actions.